Friday, June 8, 2012

Eager researchers now have two sources to find indexes for parts of the images for the 1940 US Census. As previously reported in this blog, a huge team of volunteers has been very busy indexing these images by name and location. Now Ancestryhas announced that it is beginning to bring up indexes of full states. Currently only Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Nevada and New York are searchable by name there.

It is important for researchers to realize that there are at least two separate projects racing to complete indexes to this census. While Delaware and Nevada are searchable by both and it appears that Maine will be very soon, New York and the District of Columbia are not in that category. New York, the most populist state in 1940 is only 47% indexed by the consortium headed by FamilySearch and Archives.com. So if your ancestors were in New York, you will need to look for them on Ancestry. If you don't have a subscription, don't worry. This census will be accessible there free of charge at least through 2013.

On the other hand the consortium announced yesterday that it had passed the halfway point of its index of all 132 million names enumerated that year:

The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project
announced today that its searchable index of 1940 U.S. census records
has reached – and surpassed – the halfway mark toward completion. Thanks
to the efforts of more than 125,000 volunteers, more than 75 million
names from the 1940 U.S. census have been indexed with 18 state records
already available to the public on all Project partner websites,
including the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Archives.com, FamilySearch.org
and findmypast.com. The records will also be made available in more
than 7,000 public libraries nationwide in the coming months by ProQuest.
The national service project, the first and largest of its kind, aims
to establish a comprehensive searchable database and make the 1940 U.S.
census records available for free.

You will need to check on the progress of both of these ambitious projects every few days if you have not yet been able to find the record for you ancestors in the 1940 Census. How have your searches been going so far?